


what did you bury / before those hands pulled me from the earth?

by starlightswait



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, dean is only referenced, lucifer is briefly present but mostly referenced, this is a lucifer hate zone just fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23995369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightswait/pseuds/starlightswait
Summary: It’s the strangest thing.Sam’s in the Cage.And then he’s not.
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 15
Kudos: 102





	what did you bury / before those hands pulled me from the earth?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesunwillshineclear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunwillshineclear/gifts).



> Hi, all!
> 
> It's, uh, been a hot minute! A hot enough minute, in fact, that the last fic I posted was also a birthday fic for Lauren. Whoops?
> 
> Anyways, @Lauren: please enjoy this mess of trauma and softness. It made sense in my head. <333333
> 
> Lyrics in the title are from 'Like Real People Do' by Hozier!
> 
> @Everyone PLEASE heed the warnings. The noncon stuff is not explicit but heavily implied and referenced, and there are places where the torture/violence could be called explicit. Be careful! Take care of yourself! I don't know why I thought this was a good idea for a birthday fic! Best laid plans and all that, I guess.
> 
> Also: the noncon is STRICTLY Lucifer's doing, none of that is going on with Sam and Cas. We support cute softies who respect boundaries.
> 
> Also, this fic isn't supposed to be Dean negative, so I didn't tag it that way. Sam loves Dean very much, he just also knows that Dean's way of dealing with things probably won't be very helpful for him.
> 
> Thanks for reading. And @Lauren: You great. You cool. I'm sorry this is days late. Happy birthday!

Sam’s in the Cage. 

He doesn’t know much beyond Lucifer shining brighter than any star, any sun. He knows the name means Morningstar; he’s known since he was eleven and read it with an incomprehensible unease. He’d been searching for some kind of morbid absolution in a dog-eared bible tucked away in the drawers of a dingy motel room. But that was lifetimes ago, and he never really understood what it meant, anyway. He wasn’t capable of that level of understanding before he jumped—but now it’s all he knows. It’s what he _ has _ , here. It’s  _ all  _ he has.

There is the darkness (there is always the darkness) and there are headlights without a car, (and distantly he thinks a thought he can’t quite catch, sees a shiny dark car, _ the  _ shiny dark car, the shiny dark car he and Dean made a home of, and the only time he ever cries is when he can’t recall the make, which is often, and then Lucifer turns his tears to scraping ice), glacial and fluorescent, and he is the deer caught in the glare, dead-frozen and waiting. He spends all his time waiting. Waiting for the pain to start or waiting for it to cease impermanently; he knows that this is what there is. The space around him suspends. There is no hope of being saved, and so he never begs for it, he never wishes (sometimes he finds himself praying for Cas but he stops, he always stops), he just lets himself be taken apart little by little and as much as it hurts, as much as the pain becomes not what he knows but what he  _ is _ and has always been and will always be, there’s also something pure in that. Some kind of absolution.

“No,” Lucifer seethes, and Sam’s confused and darkly relieved to find that he can still get confused, at least for now. No point in thinking in days.

He doesn’t know what his face must look like—scarred and torn and covered in blood and broken, so broken, that’s not new, though it’s what hurts the most he knows he’s weak he knows he’s the least of any of them but if the ones he loves (loved? does he still get to love?) could see him now—but he imagines that there’s some surprise there. Lucifer knows he’s won. Sam never talks back anymore. 

The first time Sam whimpered, the devil was stroking his hair. 

Sam remembers the feeling he had on earth like everything inside him was lit and poised to flame, like he had rebellions storming his heart. Now his arms just go limp and he whimpers at a gentle touch that he craves for the rare intimacy and despises for the. For the.

The point is—Lucifer bends reality and does terrible, terrorful things that Sam never quite lets himself name, but he never tries to tame Sam anymore. There wouldn’t be a point.

Lucifer says other things that Sam can’t quite discern, and Sam shuts his eyes and finds that he’s glad that he still has eyes to shut for now, for this fleeting sphere of time. Whatever’s coming is soon, and it will be bad, but Sam will endure it. There’s no other option, he has to, he has to, because this is his own damn fault, this was his mess to clean up and he fixed it but there was the price this is the price and it’s worth it it’s worth—

  
  


His ears shriek and 

burn

burn

**burn**

…

  
  
  
  


It’s the strangest thing.

  
  


Sam’s in the Cage.

  
  


And then he’s not. 

Instead, he’s kneeling in a field of grass. He doesn’t like the kneeling. His knees hurt. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. 

He doesn’t stand, but when he looks up, he hears a scream. It sounds like his voice if his voice was a crater. 

(Maybe it is.)

The light overwhelms, familiar though it may be.

Fingers soft on his forehead and—

(Being eight.) (Collapsing in the school gym.) (His body is a war zone.) (Big brother shaped hands with an old rag) (soaked with cold sink water.) (They don’t own a thermometer.) (There’s nothing that could heal Sam of what he is and what he’ll be.)

(Then there is the darkness.) (Then there is always the darkness.) 

(Sam has been falling into it his entire life.)

  
  
  


“Sam.”

_ A voice is whispering Sam’s name. _

_ He has a name, he holds onto that. He has a name.  _ “Sam.”  _ His name is an anchor. In the deepest darkest coldest (freezing fucking Christ) ocean made up of him, the water particles and the mistakes and the ocean salt and the shame and _

_ he is sinking and his swimming shorts are too big, they used to be Dean’s and he is thirteen years old and  _ wrong _ he is wrong every blood cell and his name is an anchor his name is the anchor his name is: _

“Sam.”

_ An ocean wave. Breaking onto the shore. Far in the distance. _ He jerks awake. 

This time when he looks up he doesn’t see the light, just Castiel’s furrowed brow, and discerningly gentle eyes.

Sam’s not worthy. 

But then again, he seems to be in some old cabin in the middle of nowhere, so maybe he doesn’t have to be worthy right now. Maybe he can just be. The Cage doesn’t feel far, exactly, but there’s a distinct separation of then and now, of the way it felt there and the way it feels here. He has to hold onto that.

Finally, he blinks. “Cas?”

Castiel had been staring, waiting, not pushing. He’s like that, a lot of the time, and part of Sam finds it awkward but the other part likes the calm feeling of knowing Castiel will wait until he’s ready for literally whatever. It’s nice.

If angels could feel relief, that’s what he would call the expression on Castiel’s face when Sam speaks. Except maybe Castiel can. Feel relief, that is. Cas isn’t like the others, and he’s certainly not like Lucifer, who’s always all arctic eyes.

Castiel is every bit as warm as he is righteous.

“Hello, Sam.” A pause. “I’m glad that your English seems to have remained intact.”

“You mean… because of the Enochian?”

Castiel nods, a grim expression shadowing his face. “I feared that after your tenure in the Cage, your language of origin might have been lost to you. Especially after you could only scream when you saw me in my true form. I’m glad to see I was wrong.”

“That was you?” A shiver runs through Sam. The light had felt familiar, but it had scared him all the same. Now that he looks back on it, though, it hadn’t made any move at all to hurt him. It just reminded him of a different light, brighter and more washed out.

“Indeed. I apologize for scaring you. You seem to be doing well now.” A pause. “Considering.”

No elaboration. There’s no need to name such horrors, and Sam’s relieved to find that Cas doesn’t try. And he does feel okay right now, so he kind of just nods, hands shoved in his pockets as he sits at the edge of the bed he’d woken on. It’s not like there’s—

_ Blood running through the space between his toes hair being yanked soul drenched in burning ice Lucifer listing off the ways he failed those he loved the most, how he wasn’t enough to protect them, how he was never going to be enough, not when it was his destiny to belong to the devil, one way or another— _

“Yeah, I’m, uh. Still a little dazed, but I’m dealing. Okay, I think.”

Castiel nods. “You were out for several hours. It makes sense that you need some time to come to.” 

Sam clears his throat, nodding. He’s hoping that his momentary lapse in ( _ sanity)  _ cognitive awareness hadn’t been too obvious. Hoping that with time, these flashbacks will fade into the distance of memory, like a bad dream or the day Dad didn’t show up to the soccer game he said he’d be at. Just something that happened once and is over and will stay over. 

Like a few bad dreams and his well-renowned daddy issues are even comparable to the times when Lucifer tore into him wearing Dean’s face, or Bobby’s, or Castiel’s—

_ “I don’t love you, you know,” Lucifer said, shaped in Castiel’s visage, speaking in a bad imitation of the other angel’s voice. Pitched too high. He smiles too much to be Cas. It still hurts. “We’re not friends. And we’re certainly not whatever you’ve been pining for since we met.” Telling had been his mistake, his moment of weakness, he’d hurt so much he hurt all over all inside and the devil had baited it out of him.“You know it’s true,” Lucifer says, dropping the pretense that had been dripping from his voice. “Why would an angel like that, all full of righteous fury and a love for the good of humanity, ever go for a monstrous abomination as lowly and depraved as you?” His voice grows soft in a mockery of warmth. “You’re lucky I have low standards.” _

Castiel’s hand is placed firmly on Sam’s shoulder, Sam can see, now that he’s back in the land of Not Being Tortured, and he jerks away. Shivering. He knows it’s Cas. He knows it’s not Lucifer. He’s pretty sure. 

Really, he does know, but his wires are all mixed up now, and a gentle touch doesn’t mean the same thing it used to, it means the pain is coming soon, it means that it’s going to be used against him and he would prefer not to have hope that it might not.

“Sam…”

Castiel must have witnessed Lucifer playing his favorite party games right before the rescue, and Sam can’t… he… 

“We’re not friends,” Sam gasps out, scrambling, maybe there are tears pooling in his eyes but there shouldn’t be, he shouldn’t be giving anyone that kind of satisfaction ever, “we’re not friends, I know you don’t, I know we’re not…”

“Sam, of course we’re friends. It’s my honor to be your friend. Please, just tell me what’s wrong?”

In the part of Sam’s mind that’s still using logic, he can hear the hurt and the confusion dripping from Castiel’s voice, and it’s wrong, it’s all wrong. 

He shouldn’t be able to make an angel sad.

He tries to explain. He tries.

“You saw. When you were getting me out. You saw..”

“Sam, it’s alright.”

“No, it’s not. You weren’t supposed to see. No one was supposed to—leave,” he says, loud, gasping. 

No one was ever supposed to get to see him like that. He moves backward on the bed until his shoulders hit the headboard, gaze darting to anywhere but Castiel’s searching eyes. “Please, Cas, just go.”

A sigh, and then: “As you wish, Sam. Pray to me if you need me, Sam. I’ll come back.”

It sounds like a promise. In other circumstances, Sam would think it was sweet. Right now he just feels like he’s collapsing in on himself, and he just wants. He just wants.

He just wants to be done.

But he can’t have that. He has to make to do with what he has, or what he could have. 

Sam has to find a way to live in the world that never really wanted him in the first place, that spat him out and said “good riddance.”

  
  
  


Sam misses Dean. Which sounds ridiculous, because yeah, obviously, but he does. He misses the smell of his brother’s favorite brand of laundry detergent. Of all things.

That’s why he prays to Cas, hours later, after his panic has subsided.

He’s directing an intense stare at the kind of ugly panelled walls of the cabin when Cas appears out of thin air. When he sees Cas, he shifts at the edge of the hard, wooden chair he’s been sitting at near what passes for a dining table, and feels his cheeks flush with something akin to shame.

“Hey, Cas, man, I’m… I’m really sorry. About before. I was just kind of freaked. You know, I just got back and um. Everything’s kind of. Sorry.”

  
Castiel offers a weary smile. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Sam Winchester. I wished to help, as you seemed to be in distress, but I should have realized that physical contact might be triggering for you in that state.”

“Right. Um.” 

Sam doesn’t like feeling this known. Except for the part of him that does, because it’s Cas.

He shakes his head, as though that could clear him of the thought, of the desire. Lucifer hadn’t been right on much, but this was different.

“I was wondering if maybe, um, Dean…”

Understanding dawns on Castiel’s face as he goes to sit at a chair near Sam, but far enough away that Sam doesn’t feel cornered. “Your brother will be here in a few days. He wanted me to, uh, “zap his ass over here, pronto,” but I’m afraid that raising you from perdition expended a lot of energy. I’m not at full strength.”

“So Dean didn’t know that you saved me? He wasn’t in on it?”

“No. He knew that I was looking for a way and helping me research, but I sent him some information about a hunt fairly far away. If it didn’t work,” Cas admits, sounding… oddly vulnerable, as though the thought of it not working was upsetting, “I didn’t want him lost to the world, too. Losing you was already far too great a cost.”

Sam wonders if he’s gone slack-jaw and promptly closes his mouth. He knows that Cas cares about him, but he’d thought it was just for Dean’s sake. But fuck, Cas sounds like he… like he really cares. Like Sam himself matters to him. And that’s really more than Sam knows how to handle, so he shifts gears.

“Thank you,” Sam says. “For making sure that Dean didn’t do anything stupid. And for getting me out,” he says, a little quieter. He’s grateful for both, but everything concerning the Cage is a little more complicated. He still feels fuzzy.

“You’re quite welcome,” Castiel smiles, slow and real and fond. “But to answer your question, yes, Dean is coming. It will just be a few days. And he didn’t know that you were back until I told him, a few hours ago. While you were coming down from your panic attack.”

Sam’s taken aback and all the fuzziness from before fades into something sharper. He’s not freaked anymore, but he’s sort of on edge. “Panic attack? That’s not—”

“Sam, you’ve endured great trauma, and for as long as you were gone, I would be more surprised if you weren’t having panic attacks, quite frankly. It’s alright to admit that things aren’t exactly… oh, what’s the phrase? Something about nectarines.”

Sam feels too stunned to comment on that front, though he makes a mental note to teach Cas about idioms sometime. “How long was I gone, exactly?”

“A year. And,” Cas adds, voice somehow calculating and steady at once. “Eleven days, four hours, fifteen minutes, and twenty-one seconds. If we’re being exact.”

“If I didn’t know better,” Sam starts, then winces as he feels a phantom residual pain shooting through his arms, “I’d say that was a joke.”

Castiel grins, and  _ god _ (or whatever), isn’t that a sight. The ghost of the pain dissipates at it. “And it was even almost funny.”

Sam surprises himself by letting out a genuine laugh at that. If he has to wait a few days for Dean… Cas isn’t the worst company he could hold, that’s for certain.

“Why’d you save me, Cas?” He hates to ruin the mood, but he feels the need to acknowledge the question burned into his mind.

“If you don’t know the answer to that by now, then I’m not sure how to explain.” Huh. Something to think on. It’s the only time, so far, that Cas has sounded even a little bit annoyed. But he quickly changes the subject. “Sam, may I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“How long was it for you?” No beat, no tension, just the still, waiting air. No press, no force. Sam can feel it, somehow, that Cas wouldn’t press on in his questioning if Sam told him to stop. That makes him want to try for honesty, or as close as he can get.

“I don’t know,” he manages after a few moments. “Longer, I guess? Being there, it didn’t really feel like time was moving, you know? It didn’t start or end, everything was just suspended in eternity until it wasn’t.”

“I understand,” Cas says, like it’s that simple, like it’s something that  _ can _ be understood. And for Cas, it is. 

Sam’s realizing that Cas is not just a placeholder, nor is he just a fleeting infatuation or a symbol of the purity of Sam can never reach. Sam’s glad that Cas, specifically, is here. Because as much as he loves Dean, as much as he longs to see him, he knows Dean (tactile, emotional, ambience-based Dean) won’t really get it. And right now, he needs someone who just Gets It, that doesn’t need him to explain any further than “I just can’t right now.”

  
  


It feels right, being here with Cas. For the next couple of hours, he fills Sam in on what’s occurred while he’s been ( _ flayed burned mocked _ ) gone. Dean had stayed with Lisa and Ben a while, almost made it to three months, but it hadn’t worked out. Cas had tried to get Sam out more than once, but his first attempt went sideways. After that, he’d gone to Dean for help with research and whatnot, as well as figuring out what to do about a heavenly civil war and that had pretty much been that. Dean had tried to stay in contact for a while, but it was putting them in danger. Once he had Cas erase their memories of All Things Winchester (a decision Sam is retroactively cringing at), they’d been hard at work trying to get him out. But Cas made sure to send Dean on a mission a few days’ drive from where he’d sprung Sam from the Cage, because if it didn’t work out, he didn’t want Dean lost as well. And then, then, while Sam was unconscious, he’d found this secluded and empty cabin. It seems like a winter holiday place, so they shouldn't need to worry about anyone calling the cops on them.

  
As it would happen, though, the cabin isn’t  _ entirely  _ empty. Eventually, they run out of catching up to do, so Sam manages to find a decent movie on the television, a deck of cards (teaching Cas how to play a five hand draw is more challenging than anticipated), and currently, they’re making dinner with some chipped dishes and utensils, because Sam had insisted on leaving the good one’s unused for whoever stays here in the winter.

Sam hadn’t been hungry at first; the shock of being back had delayed that reaction. But now that he’s starting to feel more present and aware, his stomach is grumbling. Which makes sense, when he thinks about it, because he hasn’t eaten in a year. Or however long his stint in the Cage was when he was there. It hadn’t seemed to matter there, but now Sam’s starving. Luckily, they’re almost done with the spaghetti that Cas had gotten the ingredients for at a market (per Dean’s instructions) while Sam was still out cold, so that problem should be solved sooner than later. 

This is good. Problems that can be fixed. Needing food. It’s good.

Hanging with Cas, too. That’s good.

Sam had expected to be a little awkward even if it was enjoyable, but honestly? It just feels natural.

The next few days, they talk, and joke (if Cas had a soul, Sam would be sure that he’d sold it for a better sense of humor, because he swears it wasn’t like this before), and cook. Sam introduces Cas to the wonders of channel surfing. Cas tells Sam stories of days long past. Sometimes Sam slips into Enochian and it takes a while before he catches it. Cas never minds.

Sam loves his brother and he wants the reassuring clasp of Dean’s hands pressed against his back, but another part of him is still scared of being touched. He and Cas have been doing a dance of distance ever since the shoulder incident (that Sam acknowledges was definitely a panic attack but will never ever admit that to Dean.)

Castiel has been sure to keep out of reach, though close, and is a calming presence in the sense that he isn’t rushing to ask Sam to lay out every bad thing that’s happened to him and call it honesty. He doesn’t need to hug or hold Sam to show that he cares, and right now, that’s what he needs. It gives him some time to prepare himself, at least.

The difference between Dean and Cas is that Dean will want to try to fix Sam and Cas already knows that he can’t be fixed, that he can only try to heal a little bit every day, but will never be exactly the same. He’s found in the last few days that he can admit in light of this nostalgic wooden cabin that Cas cares about him as much as Dean does, though in a different way entirely. He can’t place what it is that they have exactly; he doesn’t know if it can be called romance, exactly (no matter how badly he wants that), but a kind of hopeful tenderness exists in both of them and he’s happy with that for now. He’s happy to have a future where things might be more clear, might be easier. He didn’t have one in the Cage. He never expected to have one again, but now everything feels possible.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t wake in soaked in cold sweat at night, or hyperventilate when his glass of water crashes to the ground. Cas tells him not to worry about it too much.

“It’s okay, Sam. Just take it in steps.”

So he has been. He’s been telling Cas when he needs some time alone or when he needs to know that this is safe, that this is real. He’s been practicing breathing exercises. Usually, he just does those when he’s hurt (though being hurt means something much different than it used to), but it seems like they’d probably be good for this too.

All in all, things have been going better than could probably be expected. He’s a mess, but he feels like maybe he could be okay. Eventually. One day.

The thing is… Sam’s not scared of his brother, he’s really not, but he knows that Dean won’t understand how to deal with all this in the way that Cas seems to.

Dean will try to get Sam to bury his sorrows with alcohol and sex (which is so not in the cards right now, if it ever will be again.) And Sam knows it will come from a good place, but it’s not what he needs, and he doesn’t know how to tell Dean that without feeling like his bones are showing (a feeling not unfamiliar to him.)

But Cas has been content to sit with Sam in silence during the moments he overthinks everything, happy to play cards when he can’t handle the loud crashes on tv.

He’s trying to know Sam in a way that few people ever will, that Lucifer never could have comprehended, and it scares him more than he knows what to do with, but it seems selfish to hide from that which risked everything to be his salvation. So he gives into it.

He’s falling into something, but he’s not sure it can be called darkness anymore.

It’s the night before Dean’s due to arrive. And Sam’s not scared, exactly, but… maybe he’s anxious. Maybe that can be an okay thing to be about your brother. The point is, Sam can’t sleep. He’s been trying for hours but never quite able to cross the threshold. It’s bad tonight, if he’s being honest. It’s not memories, or flashbacks, or whatever. It’s just this unshakeable feeling of  _ bad. _

The room’s so cold. He wraps his arms around himself. Tries to get the blanket impossibly closer, tries to count the fucking sheep. Nothing’s working. He doesn’t think anything will.

Except. Maybe… 

Softly, he says into the low light: “Cas?” He knows he could just pray, but Cas is just in the other room. It seems silly to pray when he can just say the name that brings him comfort.

Cas is there within moments, though he doesn’t just appear. He walks in, slow and careful. “Yes, Sam?”

Sam really doesn’t know what the plan is. “Would you—I mean. I don’t mean to… it’s just. I’m kind of, uh, cold,” he manages, hoping that the word will signal what he wants into Castiel’s mind. They’ve only talked about it a little, but Cas knows what the cold means for Sam, knows how Lucifer embodies a cruel and twisted ice storm, a barren snow day.

Cas seems to get it, like he pretty much always does, if not at first then eventually. He takes a tentative step toward the bed, then another. He seems to realize that his coat might not exactly be comfortable, and he strips himself of it, throwing it carelessly to the ground. Sam might admonish him for it under different circumstances. But right now…

Oh. _ Oh _ . Cas is lying on the bed, facing him, and even without touch, it already feels so much warmer, so much safer. Being under Castiel’s soft, penetrating gaze is sort of weird, but also not bad. Not bad at all. There’s no intent there, just this look. Like Cas could look into his eyes and never get tired of it. 

Sam finds himself yawning already now that Cas is here and the cold doesn’t feel like it could shatter him. Cas reaches out, puts the back of his hand on the bed, palm facing up, in silent offer.

When Sam takes it, he feels so fundamentally at peace. Like something inside him has shifted. In this moment, the Cage and all that inhabited is not haunting him. It’s a part of his past, and he can’t erase it, but in this moment, he knows it doesn’t have to define him.

Honestly, right now, all he cares to think of his present, the fingers he’s interlocking with Castiel’s. 

“Sam?” There’s an edge of insecurity that startles Sam back into Not Being A Sappy Motherfucker. Cas shouldn’t ever have to feel insecure. Cas is… is…

“Do you… did you really not think we were friends before?”

Sam doesn’t know how to answer this. It feels like a trap, but he knows it’s not. Cas would never do that. _ In and out _ , his brain supplies.  _ Just breathe in and out. _

“Cas, I… I’ve always cared about you. I… you know. I really admired you, when we first met, and then for a while there it seemed like maybe you hated me and I tried to hate you back. But I never really could. It’s not that I don’t want to be your friend. It’s that I want to be your friend, but I also want… I mean. I love you, you know?” He sighs, though he’s not sure whether it’s from relief or frustration. “But back then, I thought you would’ve smited me for wanting you, or at least never spoken to me again. And now, I still, and it seems like maybe you.... I don’t know what it is you feel. But I do know that I like being with you. And that there’s no one else that could’ve helped and understood me the way you have these last few days. But I can’t.... I won’t be able to give you the things that you might want. That would come with a normal relationship, if that even exists for an angel and a hunter. I can’t... not now. Maybe not ever.”

As he speaks, his eyes are drifting to pretty much anywhere but Castiel’s, and it’s hard to look at him. Even in his vessel’s form, Castiel is still made up of overwhelming light. 

“Sam. Would you look at me please?” He squeezes Sam’s fingers in reassurance.

“I love you, too. I have since before, but I didn’t… I’ve never been in love, Sam. I’m an angel. We’re not supposed to be wired for it. But,” Cas smiles a self-deprecating smile, “as you can probably tell by now, I’ve never exactly… ‘fit in,’ as it were. So when I realized my feelings for you, I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t know who to turn to. But when you were gone, I would’ve given anything to get you back. You asked before why I saved you. That’s why. Because you deserved to be saved, and… and because I missed you.”

Sam breathes out. “Oh.” Then: “Great.”

Cas stares at him awkwardly for a moment, and they both burst into a fit of quiet laughter. 

“‘Great’? I make a grand declaration of my love for you, and that’s what you have to say for yourself? ‘Great?’”

“Really great?” Sam teases. Through the darkness, he’s pretty sure he can see a mild pink tinting Cas’s cheeks. “And by the way,” Sam says, mock-offended, “I totally declared mine first.”

“That you did.”

Quiet. Dark. Sam’s heart is beating so fast.

“Cas?” he says into the dark.

“Mm?”

“I really want to kiss you.”

“Then do.”

“But I’m scared.”

“Then don’t.”

Sam looks up to see if Cas is teasing him, only to see a solemn though not unkind expression.

“Sam, I’ve survived an eternity without kissing, or sex, or what have you. And I love you, and I want to give you what you want. So when you feel ready, if you ever do, I’ll be here. I’ll give you all the time you need. And if you never feel ready, I’ll love you all the same.”

“It sounds so easy when you say it like that.”

Cas smiles. “Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done, Sam Winchester.”

If Sam falls asleep crying to the gentle thought of that, Cas humming a lullaby to him all the way through, that’s really nobody’s business but theirs. Despite all the traumas endured and that may yet come, Sam somehow feels like the luckiest man, nevermind that he was being brutalized mere days ago. 

Castiel is smiling his Just-For-Sam smile while Sam drifts off, and Sam swears there’s a real, tangible absolution in that.

(He was never falling.) (He was always flying towards this moment.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come shout at me on my spn sideblog @harmocdsam. I promise I'm just as wordy and incoherent there.


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